Three Things I’ve Learned About Baking Bread With Whole Grain

February 19, 2015

...se). Once I shape my dough, I put it in the fridge to proof overnight. The time in the fridge makes wet dough easier to handle and develops the flavor. And that cold dough can go straight from the fridge and into the oven. 3. The biodiversity of grains and the way they behave as bread has been a astonishing and sometimes frustrating experience (note the difference in the photo above between a loaf made with Sonora wheat and a loaf made with Joachi...

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Who Needs Windows?

Mr. Homegrown

November 23, 2021

Design

5 Comments

...tories tall, depending on how you count the floors, and so it takes a long time to go up and down and grab records and bring them down. When people come to use the original records, they sit in our search room and we bring them the records they want, and they sit there waiting.” There are issues with climate control, exacerbated by the building’s shape. (Monoliths are great for catching the sunlight.) Temperature and humidity fluctuations are bad...

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Pet Peeve: Texting at the Gym

Mr. Homegrown

March 17, 2016

Fitness, Thoughtstylings

12 Comments

The older I get the more time I seem to have to spend at the gym fixing dumb sports injuries. With that age also comes a crankiness about rude smartphone habits. Lately I’ve found my exercise routine lengthened by having to wait for people just sitting on equipment and texting. I know that this is a “first world problem” and I’ll acknowledge that I’ve probably been guilty of searching for just the right podcast episode between sets. But the gym s...

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Learning to Draw Version 4.0

Mr. Homegrown

May 21, 2021

Design

6 Comments

...teaches high school art about my revelation and he said that he has a hard time convincing his students that their blind contour drawings are better than their regular work. It’s a good thing, he said, that I know the difference. An art professor friend gave me another good tip, that I should look at the drawings of top shelf artists from all different eras. This was a reminder that drawings aren’t the same thing as art and that it’s important to...

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Josey Baker on Bread: Whole, Wild, Wet, Slow and Bold

Mr. Homegrown

November 23, 2015

Bread, Fermentation, Food

4 Comments

...both Baker and Miller push that wetness to very high hydration levels: sometimes in the neighborhood of 120% hydration if you’re keeping score. (N.B. Hydration level refers to the ratio of water to flour by weight: 100 grams of flour mixed with 100 grams of water = 100% hydration) A big advantage of wet dough is that you don’t need to knead it. The gluten strands align on their own in the wet dough matrix. You still have to do some stretching and...

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